Hand-held dental instruments typically include an elongated shaft for gripping and manipulating by the dental practitioner, and a working tool or dental point located at one or both ends of the shaft. The tools or points are normally inserted into cone members carried by the handle which cones have sockets for receiving a base of the tool. Examples of such dental hand-piece constructions can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,361,317 and 5,816,806.
Problems have developed with authorized (and unauthorized) re-tipping of dental points for such dental hand-piece structures. For example, replacing the working point (also known as re-tipping in the industry) creates several concerns, including that the handle-point interface (i.e., the cone area) may be damaged by the re-tipping process and thereby lower the overall quality of the instrument. In addition, after instruments become dull, they need to be sharpened, but after sharpening a few times, the tip points can lose too much mass and may not be sharpened any longer (or should not be sharpened further, for safety and other reasons). There are also problems associated with procedures for re-tipping, such as where, if a screw-engagement system is used, the blade tips at the respective ends of the handle do not properly or reliably align with one another in an oppositely-directed manner, as is customary with manual dental instruments used for removing tartar, plaque, and other calculus from teeth. Extra time must also be taken to assemble screw-type replacement tips into the handle. There are also the issues of infection control and complications to adequate sterilization. Further, the handling of sharp bio-contaminated instruments is dangerous. There is also the problem of an appropriate way to have used instrument tip points washed, cleaned, sterilized, honed or otherwise reconditioned as needed.
It would be desirable to be able to provide dental instruments with easily replaceable tips that may be safely deposited in sharps containers. In particular, it would be beneficial to provide a system in which, after use, dental instrument tips, such as scaler tips, may be released from a handle directly into a sharps container, and re-sterilized. With such a system, one could have the ability to identify batches of replacement tips for dental hand-piece instruments that have been properly sterilized and are ready to re-tip a standard handle, and/or to identify how many sharpenings have already occurred for a set of replacement tips of a given instrument type.